Atrophy of the stomach affects primarily the glands, which become sparse and small. In atrophy of the gastric corpus and fundus, parietal and chief cells disappear from the oxyntic glands, and the residual glands may undergo pseudopyloric metaplasia.

Mucosal atrophy can be noted grossly, especially in advanced, diffuse atrophy of oxyntic mucosa in the fundus and corpus where rugae disappear and underlying blood vessels become visible.

On the other hand, mucosal thinning is often grossly inapparent in the antrum, probably because its overall thickness is preserved by accompanying inflammation, intestinal metaplasia, or foveolar hyperplasia.

Atrophy is often associated with intestinal metaplasia, but these two features may occur independently of each other.

In pernicious anemia (corpus-predominant atrophic gastritis), there may be little or no intestinal metaplasia in large areas of the atrophic stomach; in contrast, scattered goblet cells may be found in the surface and foveolar epithelium of many nonatrophic H. pylori-infected stomachs.

When metaplastic epithelium replaces the specialized epithelium of the mucous glands in the antrum or oxyntic glands in the corpus, however, there is actual loss of functional glandular tissue, and therefore true atrophy. In such an instance, atrophy and intestinal metaplasia coincide.

A distinctive form of gastric atrophy occurs in patients who undergo subtotal gastrectomy (antrectomy). Since there is reduced gastrin stimulation, parietal cells diminish in number in the residual stomach and the oxyntic mucosa becomes thinned.

Ok, it does help immensely, but can you dumb it down a bit for me and tell me what it points to medically? I actually have no gastro symptoms at all--just had the endoscopy done for possible causes of anemia. The doctor didn't want to talk about any of it too much until he got the biopsy results back (they took three).

Augustines... what that meant is that you have lost part of your intrinsic factor, the part of your stomach lining that produces the acid and enzymes to digest the food. This happens as you get older and you may have to take enzyme supplements to break down the food so it can be absorbed. What kind of anemia? What did the report say about the small bowel?

i just finished with a Colonoscopy.Endo testing with biopsie of everything... On impressions from test it reads
Normal appearing colonoscopy...
then on EGD it reads..
decreased duodena villi.
pale gastric mucosa (atrophic-like)
distal esophagus with two islands of squamous epithelium 2cm above Z line..
pale duodenal mucosa..

Biopsy results still pending from a week ago..
Man o man..it takes a rocket scientist to figure all this stuff out...
In simple terms..please explain this stuff to me..I been looking it up and google it, but its confusing.
thanks

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